"The Reaper is to the North...": The Genesis of a Lie

Abstract

Secretary of War Stanton said: The reaper is to the North what slavery is to the South. By taking the place of regiments of young men in western harvest fields, it released them to do battle for the Union at the front and at the same time kept up the supply of bread for the nation and the nation's armies. Thus, without McCormick's invention I feel the North could not win and the Union would have been dismembered.'1This quote came from a public relations produced in 1931 by International Harvester as part of the centennial celebration of Cyrus McCormick's invention of the reaper. This of McCormick's reaper was distributed to teachers, newspaper editors, and others. Stanton's quote dominates the brief section devoted to the American Civil War. It is meant to suggest that one of the iconic figures of the Civil War recognized McCormick as a patriotic contributor to the Union cause and without him Union victory and the emancipation of millions of slaves would have been in doubt. However, this noble, patriotic image of Cyrus McCormick is a myth.The problem with Stanton's quote in this interpretation is that it has been taken out of context and grossly misrepresents not only McCormick's feelings about the Civil War, but also his factory's production of reapers to support that righteous cause. Of course, Stanton's quote and its misinterpretation do not only appear in International Harvester's publications, but pervade the historiography of Cyrus McCormick during the Civil War. It has also been used in hundreds of books, articles, and historic documents about the Civil War and nineteenth-century America.The ubiquity of Stanton's misleading quote is the result of a concerted effort by Cyrus McCormick's family to shape and protect Cyrus's legacy as the inventor of the reaper. Frequent threats to this legacy from competing reaper firms had been common throughout Cyrus's life. However, after his death in 1884, his brother Leander's family began to claim that Cyrus had not invented the reaper. Alternatively they claimed that the brothers' father, Robert McCormick, had invented the machine and entrusted it to Cyrus to manage for the family. This family dispute would continue for generations. By the turn of the twentieth century, the battleground for the conflict became books as both sides attempted to convince the general public of the validity of their claims.By that time, Cyrus's family had begun to employ historians, lawyers, and librarians to aid in their cause. This assembled staff of what might be called the McCormick history machine, virulently promoted their of the reaper and Cyrus McCormick. They actively challenged dissenting historical opinions, produced historical works, influenced the scholarship of others, and created a world-class agricultural library. Stanton's quote became powerful ammunition for the McCormick machine which used it as the primary proof of Cyrus's contributions to one of the United States' most important formative moments. The machine's efforts to drown out dissenting historical opinions are what have made the quote so commonplace in the historiography of Cyrus McCormick, the reaper, and the Civil War.Cyrus's Civil WarOnly after peeling back the layers of fictitious can a clear picture emerge of Cyrus McCormick's real relationship to the Civil War. He was not the patriotic supporter of the Union cause that Edwin Stanton's quote implies, but rather was a Peace Democrat. Also mistaken is how prolific his reaper works was during the Civil War. From 1861 to 1865 reaper production at C.H. McCormick & Bros, can be characterized as turbulent at best.Cyrus McCormick was deeply distraught by the outbreak of war within the United States and actively sought to end the conflict in peaceful reunification through both legitimate and clandestine means. As a native Virginian and a businessman of Chicago, he was uncomfortably torn between the two belligerents. …